What I see is a first gen device that will morph into its proper ideal as time moves on. Both the Apple Watch and iPhone faced a lot of ridicule when they first launched and I remember being sat on the front row of GCSE Maths wondering why the rich kids were texting on their Nokia 402's and why I would ever need a mobile phone :)

An iPhone is useful for lots of things but it does have some pretty big flaws inherent to all mobile devices: it requires two hands to use, it is easily stolen, the centralised app paradigm comes with adverts, it is full of negative addictive properties like media consumption and gaming, it is too fragile and a big distraction doing other things.

I won't argue that a smartwatch is a much better form and gives you all the communication benefits minus all the negatives above. But just as Captain Kirk's communicator inspired the original Motorola Startac so has Captain Picard's comm badge inspired this one. It could have a lot of use as a replacement for employee ID cards, as a bodycam for the police, in campus or medical facilities and as a less complex device for the elderly to use.

The laser display is a pretty clever way of sidestepping the need for a screen. I hope we do get to type out messages on our palms because you cannot drop and crack your hands.

Personally I think they've gone too far towards smartphone functionality; they need to take out the idea of an app ecosystem (which doesnt work on a device that cannot show adverts) and instead look to the device pulling in IOT data instead like an agnostic web browser pulls things from a server.